From Sainthood To Womanhood--Decoding Dorothea's Two Marriages In Middlemarch

Dorothea, the leading character, in George Eliot's Middlemarch has long been a controversial focus for literary study. For many previous feminist critics, her two marriages mark her out as a pathetic failure in female emancipation. This thesis intends to analyze in comparative detail her two choices of marriage in the light of Julia Kristeva's feminist linguistic-psychoanalysis, and to demonstrate how the Victorian patriarchal ideas and the repression of her abject both operate in bringing out the ending. From the noble sainthood to the common womanhood, her trajectory in life manifests the author's logicality and loyalty to historical reality. Her ending is not simply a submission or self-abnegation; it is the result of a redefinition of her self and her world in a new personal historical context.The paper is mainly devoted to the study of her two marriages. After a brief introduction, her two marriages, or the two phases in her life are analyzed in detail. And the final part is a further comment on Dorothea's ending as well as on the prospect of women's emancipation in general.